Modelling fluid flow dynamics is helpful for designing structures such as but not limited to ship hulls, pipelines and airfoils. Thus, three-dimensional (3D) animation of fluid flow dynamics is necessary to represent for example, the flow of water past a ship's hull, fluid in a pipeline, fluid flow of air past an airfoil, or fluid in blood vessels.
Further, the movie and advertising industries, military and commercial training systems, virtual reality games and entertainment, and scientific research have been increasingly turning to 3D modeling to obtain realistic visual simulations of physical phenomena.
Present computer graphic processes can be used to model some behavioral characteristics of fluid flow but cannot model the 3D dynamics of flow, and the effects caused by the internal and external boundaries of the fluid flow.
Real-time animation of fluids is not available in existing systems where the movement of fluids on a graphical computer is calculated and animated at the same time. Real-time animation is difficult to achieve where calculations are intensive. Where the simulation calculations take so much time to occur on a computer, they cannot be completed in regular intervals of time at the pace of the physical process that is being simulated. Ideally, each frame in animation must be calculated fast enough in order to achieve real-time animation.
Thus, no present systems are known to exist that produce realistic looking 3D modeling and simulation of fluid flows in realtime.
Another problem with creating 3D animation in prior art systems is that layers of 2D grids(x,y) in the --z- axis must be attached to form a 3D grid. Calculations for the third dimension must be calculated at each node on each 2D grid in the z direction. These calculations are numerous, extensive and time consuming.
A further problem is that no one has been able to actually solve Navier-Stokes equations for 3D simulation using numerical methods calculated by computer in realtime.
Additional problem is that there is not a present system available for simulating physically realistic looking, yet real-time, visible surface behavior for fluid flows.